Blizzard Damage

GreenPowerManiac · February 2011

Last nights blizzard took out one of my wind turbines again. (The yellow one in the picture) Funny though, it broke the alternator housing mount and 70% of the blades are gone and it's still spinning and generating power !!! I can just about climb the drifts to get to the barn top and repair. We've recorded nearly 70mph winds.

niel · February 2011

Re: Blizzard Damage

sorry to hear of your misfortune. i kind of lucked out with this storm as i didn't get much ice or snow (plenty of rain last night though), but the winds are strong and gusty at times. for awhile this morning i was seeing local weather sites reporting various wind directions and i think this was because the center or eye of this storm went by my area around that time. the high was 49 degrees this morning and within an hour quickly dropped about 10 degrees and was right after the center of the storm went by. at 6pm it is now 26 degrees and snowing still with strong winds (18mph) even though the winds are not quite what they were earlier.

icarus · February 2011

Re: Blizzard Damage

Sorry for your troubles, but unfortunately, it highlights one of the built in limitations of small scale wind. When you have enough to be useful, the risk is that you have enough to damage the hardware.

Tony

GreenPowerManiac · February 2011

Re: Blizzard Damage

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I took it down yesterday and looked at it to find out part of the stator coil wires where damaged due to some mounting bolts that sheared. I'll have to find a new stator coil. The blades, however, gave me another idea. While still spinning with 6" of craggy looking blades, I have some 12" blades lying around to try. They should be much more rigid and less issues with imbalance. I'm going to try this and mount. Time to get rid of the Packers colors and adopt the Steelers.

Kamala · February 2011

Re: Blizzard Damage

GreenPowerManiac wrote: »

Time to get rid of the Packers colors and adopt the Steelers.

Maybe. Maybe NOT!

GreenPowerManiac · February 2011

Re: Blizzard Damage

Turns out that the stator wires got ripped when the mounting bolts broke. Some nuts and bolts hold the front cap to the alternator housing. They loosened and got caught up in the rotor. My new stator is high amp rated with thicker wires. Not likely to get damaged in the way described.

Anyhow, Got the new stator and used Face Mounting bolts with aviation nuts this time instead of the lock washers. Modified some blades on hand to 18", not the 12". Got them painted and drying in the garage. When the wind calms down I'll consider mounting it. Right now we've got 30mph winds. Don't want to be near a rooftop in those winds.

Blizzard Damage

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